


dust and ashes

by scrapheap_redux



Category: Star Wars: The Clone Wars (2008) - All Media Types
Genre: Force Ghost(s), Force-Sensitive CC-1010 | Fox, Gen, Time Travel, Time Travel Fix-It
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-12-14
Updated: 2021-02-13
Packaged: 2021-03-10 23:41:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,265
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28065633
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/scrapheap_redux/pseuds/scrapheap_redux
Summary: Fox is dead, but his spirit doesn't move on. Left roaming the walls of what was once the Jedi Temple, Fox finds himself being pulled deeper by a force he doesn't understand.
Comments: 31
Kudos: 150
Collections: Commander Fox





	1. Prologue

CC-1010 dies above the Jedi Temple, his neck snapped by Vader’s wrath, but he does not pass on. He does not join his brothers in the Manda, the ka’ra, the Force, whatever one might call it. Something ties him to Coruscant, and Fox is once again left alone.

He’s not conscious, not exactly. His mind is half-faded, everything that had made up _Fox_ worn down and eroded under Palpatine’s crushing control, but some part of him is still aware, still watching. It’s a vague sort of awareness, leaving his consciousness almost drifting as things happen around him, but it’s awareness all the same.

The Jedi Temple is converted into the Imperial Center, the bodies having long since been dragged out and thrown to the wildlife on the lower levels, but Fox fancies he can still feel the anguish and despair that’s seeped into the building nonetheless. He can’t leave what was once the Jedi’s home, only exist as Palpatine’s darkness oozes into every crevice and puts down roots.

Palpatine’s smug satisfaction whenever he looks over his domain always curdles Fox’s stomach in a way that shouldn’t be possible for someone who no longer has a physical form. Fox can’t stand to be in his vicinity, his already tenuous grasp of self unwinding and unspooling in the man’s presence. Sometimes Fox disappears for days at a time, a sick parody of the blackouts that had once plagued his life. He starts giving Palpatine a wide berth after he fades for nearly two weeks, disappearing into the depths of the Center whenever the Emperor comes to gloat in his palace.

It feels different, there, the further down he goes, like Palpatine’s rot hasn’t set in quite as deeply. The meticulous part of Fox hates not knowing what’s going on in the galaxy around them, but Fox is dead so what does it matter anyways? He retreats deeper into the tunnels under the Center, basking in the raw, primal power that saturates the halls, so different from the suffocating sludge of the world above. The more time he spends there, the more _real_ Fox starts to feel, his broken pieces connecting back together into something more coherent than he’s been in what feels like eons.

As Fox’s being solidifies, he starts to feel a pull in what would have been his chest, leading him deeper into the labyrinth of tunnels, to areas that look like they’ve been abandoned for centuries. Not even Palpatine, in all of his cursed power, has managed to reach this deep beneath the temple, and the air practically buzzes with anticipation as Fox wanders through the empty halls. He has no body, but it feels like his skin is tingling as he pushes deeper, passing easily through collapsed arches and caved-in tunnels.

And then he finds it. There’s no way to describe it, not even to himself - it’s simply beyond words. Fox isn’t sure if he’s seeing it, or perceiving it through whatever has kept him tied to the world of the living, but it glows, pulses in the middle of an open, spacious room that looks too pristine for how long it’s been buried. It thrums with power, makes Fox’s being buzz just from being in the same room with it, and before he can think better of it he reaches out and-

_He is everything and he is nothing. He can feel the Galaxy, weeping and wounded where Sidious’ claws had sunk in and ripped. He can feel the few specks of light hidden amongst the darkness swallowing the galaxy, but they are so few and they_ hurt _, open wounds bleeding into world around them, sinking into every fiber of Fox’s being. And at the core, a rot, an aberration, Sidious having carved out a place for himself at the cost of so many others._

Fox wakes up, and he can feel a thousand specks of light in every direction.


	2. Chapter 1

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> warnings: self-harm, blood, Fox's general less-than-stellar headspace

There’s an anticipatory air hanging heavily over the Temple. Everyone can feel it, from the Elders to the Crechelings and everyone inbetween. It isn’t a sinister feeling at all, just weighty in the way that all things significant are. The walls of the Temple seem to hum with energy, the Force radiating with a level of Light and clarity that it hasn’t had in decades.

The energy just grows, the Force practically dancing with it as it thrums against knights’ skin strong enough that it’s nearly tangible, leaving many of them with restless energy they can’t quite shake. Younglings are more hyperactive than ever, running through the Room of a Thousand Fountains gleefully as their exhausted crechemasters lag behind. In the Council room, though, things are a bit different.

There’s massive cracks across the universe, to Mace’s eyes, but the shatterpoint they’re connected to is nowhere in sight. Mace’s head throbs as the Force’s harmony rises yet again, nearly drowning out Yoda’s words. Around the circle, he can see others similarly affected - those, like him, with a deeper connection to the Unifying Force. Ki-Adi Mundi’s face is stuck in a pained grimace, Adi Gallia’s expression tight in pain. And Master Sifo-Dyas, with a connection to the Unifying Force that outstrips most of them, is visibly pale and haggard, looking like he’s on the verge of collapse. Even Yoda, who has always been more connected to the Living Force, has a small frown on his face, ears drooping.

The Force suddenly swells to a blinding crescendo and then, with the sensation of an eardrum popping, the tension that has been building all day finally snaps. The whole Temple can feel it, knights and masters staggering from the sudden sensation and a few younglings bursting into tears, but it’s only the Council that are able to see what has actually happened.

It’s the shatterpoint Mace has been seeing all day. All those cracks lead right to the person collapsed in the center of the room, a person who had most definitely _not_ been there a few seconds ago. Mace can barely look past the shatterpoints, but he fights it back and squints enough that he can actually see.

They’re human, probably, with short, dark hair and an expanse of brown skin marred by scars that almost seem to be glowing. Without any clothes to speak of, it’s painfully easy to see just how _many_ scars there are covering the muscular body. A bit odd, but no more unusual than one might encounter whilst walking through Coruscant’s lower levels.

But in the Force - oh, in the Force they _burn_ , a star glowing with such radiance that it makes even the Room of a Thousand Fountains seem tarnished in comparison. The Cosmic Force resonates deeply with them, deeper than Mace has ever felt in a single sentient, but they only seem to grow brighter for it. 

It’s an oddly humbling feeling, and Mace doesn’t realize he’s frozen until they make a pained noise and he jerks. Immediately, Adi is at their mystery person’s side, going to check his pulse. As soon as her fingers brush against skin, though, eyes snap open and a hand whips out to grab Adi’s wrist. She freezes. They’re clearly not in good health, though, because they just barely make eye contact with Adi before their eyes roll back into their head and they lose consciousness.

When Fox wakes, the universe is still blindingly bright around him. He stares up at the ceiling uncomprehendingly. It isn’t the ceiling above his bunk at the Guard, carbon scoring on the metal where he’d fired off a shot in the throes of a nightmare. It’s not his office, either, cheap materials pretending to be nice. It’s blue-green. Fox has never been anywhere with a blue-green ceiling. He goes to life his head and freezes.

Because his body is _there_. He can feel the heaviness of his limbs, a sense of weight about him that he never would have recognized before his death. He feels solid, too - trapped, his body locked into one form. Like it had been when he was alive. Fox lifts his hand up - kriff, his hand looks real too, the edges crisp and defined and completely opaque. He just stares at it for a moment. The scars are still there, even the small ones from training that he’d long since forgotten about. Feeling hysteria starting to rise in his chest, Fox brings his hand down and bites it.

It hurts. It _hurts_ . He swallows hard and his jaw clenches tighter, and the pain gets worse. He can even feel the tang of copper in his mouth, the feeling of blood dripping down his chin. Fox forces himself to let go and looks at his hand, covered in bright red blood, and starts to get the nagging sensation that this is _real_. Fox just stares down at his bleeding hand, enthralled by the way the blood slowly slides down his skin and drips onto the sheet covering the rest of his body. The fabric seems to just soak up the blood as soon as it touches, the dark splotches it leaves behind the only indication that it existed at all.

A door chimes, and Fox’s head snaps up. He hadn’t done a full assessment of his surroundings when he’d woken up, but from just a glance it’s apparent that he’s in some kind of medbay. He’s fully expecting a medic to walk in, ready to lecture-

Fox’s heart catches in his throat as he feels a swell of _light_ suddenly appear. He stares at the medic in shock. She looks normal enough, a human of some kind, but something makes Fox feel like he can _feel_ her, determination and impatience mingling as she grumbles to herself and scribbles down on a clipboard. She shifts, and Fox sees a braid behind one ear.

After a moment she glances up and her eyes go wide, a feeling of alarm swelling drastically around her as she screams, dropping the clipboard and jerking back. Fox flinches away, but before anything else happens there’s suddenly two more bright lights, even bigger than the Padawan’s, and two Jedi burst into the room. Fox stares at them blankly. One of them, he doesn’t recognize, but the other…

The other is Plo Koon, who Wolffe had shot down during Order 66. Something blankets his mind, dimming the bright lights to a tolerable flicker, and Fox flinches back again in surprise. “My apologies, we didn’t think it would be quite so overwhelming for you,” the man says, voice rumbling through his rebreather. Fox stares at him blankly, too stunned to respond.

“Oh Force, they’re bleeding!” the other Jedi exclaims, abandoning her padawan to grab a towel and hurry over to his side, the padawan quickly disappearing out the door. Fox feels warmth against his skin as she grabs his wrist, pressure, too shocked by the feeling of being _touched_ to fight it as she starts messing with his hand. He can tell when she’s wiped away the blood enough to see the bitemark, because she stills for a moment before resuming what she’s doing.

“Did you do that to yourself?” Plo Koon asks, sounding concerned. Fox blinks at him a few times before his brain finally processes enough for him to speak.

“I-” he breaks off into a fit of coughs, throat painfully dry and mouth still filled with blood. Both Jedi make sounds of alarm and there’s a cup being pressed up against his lips. Fox takes a few sips from it before settling back on the bed. “I had to check that this was real.” Plo Koon just nods, a sad resignation about him even with the muffling.

“Might I recommend, in the future, that you try a slightly less extreme method of checking first?” Fox shrugs. He doesn’t know if there will be a future. Maybe this _is_ the Manda, but it’s more physical than anybody would of thought, or maybe it’s just an incredibly elaborate hallucination brought about by Fox’s stress and years of being trapped in the realm of the living. He doesn’t know.

“There we go.” The Jedi medic pats his hand and Fox looks down in surprise to find that his hand had been bandaged while he was off in his head. The medic says something more, but the words don’t register. Fox’s mind is whirling, trying to put together the pieces of a puzzle that’s half missing. What was _happening_?

“We were hoping you would know that, Ser,” Plo Koon says, and Fox looks up. He hadn’t realized he’d spoken. Plo Koon inclines his head and elaborates. “You appeared in the Council room yesterday evening in a Force anomaly the likes we have never experienced before.”

“The _Force_?” Fox says incredulously. He’s a clone, the only experience with it he’s ever had was Palpatine, except--

Except for the nexus he’d stepped into. Fox stills. “There was, a thing,” he says haltingly, and Plo Koon waits patiently. “Under- under the Temple. I touched it, and then I think-”

“A Nexus under the Temple?” Plo Koon repeats, sounding puzzled. “I’ve heard of such a thing, but the lower levels of the temple were destroyed centuries. How did you discover it?”

“I just felt something pulling me to it, sir,” Fox says, feeling more normal with each word he says. “I don’t know anything more than that, I’m not- I don’t have the Force like Jedi do.” Plo Koon pauses.

“Ser,” he says slowly. “I dare say you’re one of the strongest Force-sensitives the Jedi have encountered in the last century.” Fox’s mind stutters to a stop.


End file.
